Going Backwards

~ Clarissa

The nuclear plant’s operations were discontinued in 2015. This is one of several actions Germany undertook that year to go back to the Middle Ages.

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Published by Clarissa

11 thoughts on “Going Backwards”

    1. As I tell my students, we don’t know why the Mayans decided to abandon their civilizational advances, their beautiful cities, their majestic palaces. Different explanations were advanced but the only thing we know for sure is that one day they gave up and retreated into the jungle.

      Sometimes, civilizations simply give up and decide to go no further.

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    2. “Why?”

      The short answer is that Germany is run by people who are terrified of the past and any remotest possibility of it repeating.

      They relentlessly follow policies that are more ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ than any modern country can really allow itself to be. That’s why they add hundreds of thousands of people who will never contribute to the economy to their welfare rolls every year.

      And the German ‘intellectual’ class is even worse and often horribly mis-informed about very basic things. They are all besotted with the idea of ‘renewables’ which so far have not scaled up despite massive amounts of money poured into them.

      Finally, the German political class (across the board) bet the house on russia being a reliable economic partner (wandel durch handel – change through trade). Poland and the Baltics (maybe Finland) told them repeatedly that that was a terrible idea and were told to shut up because the adults are in charge of Germany which was unburdened by what russia had been.

      Then russia invaded Ukraine and the economic model fell apart as soon as it was obvious that Ukraine wasn’t going to surrender or just let itself be wiped out. An under-appreciated fact about the invasion of Ukraine was that it was a massive betrayal of Germany (nobody likes Germany so it doesn’t get much sympathy).

      Nonetheless, it’s still locked in to all sorts of programs that might be possible for a wealthy industrial nation but which aren’t remotely sustainable for a country whose economic bottom has fallen out. Industry is moving away from Germany as fast as it can but the political system is not a meritocracy and those in charge have no idea what to do.

      Still, the greens prefer to dig up brown coal (inefficient and terrible for the environment) so they can congratulate themselves on moving away from nuclear energy.

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          1. I’m a lefty and I don’t detest it. It has its negatives but it’s better than coal. Which still begs the question why. Can’t just be because they’re lefty. American lefties aren’t against it.

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          2. I think it’s a remnant of the peace movements of the ’60s and ’70s. To gain nuclear warheads a country had to have its own nuclear power plants producing nuclear waste. By protesting nuclear power plants, no nuclear waste was made and thus no nuclear warheads.

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        2. “isn’t Nuclear energy cleaner (and thus more lefty)?”

          Germany was _traumatized_ by Cold War nuclear rhetoric so anything with nuclear in the name is suspicious…. and there’s a whole folk belief that’s full of ridiculous anti-scientific ideas.

          nb Germany is often kind of techno-phobic (they still use faxes and contactless payment is still not that widely used and they take homeopathy very seriously). So misunderstanding the real costs and benefits of nuclear energy is well beyond many of them and the back-to-nature movement never really died there….

          Here’s a thread by Andew Hammel (American living in Germany) about an under-appreciated example of literature driving a country crazy….

          https://x.com/AndrewHammel1/status/1576132756437979136

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